The present disclosure relates to the field of power supply systems, and more particularly to controlling the power provided to an information handling system.
As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to acquire, process and store information. One option available to users is information handling systems. An information handling system (IHS) generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes thereby allowing users to take advantage of the value of the information. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements vary between different users or applications, IHSs may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in IHSs allow for IHSs to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, entertainment, and/or global communications. In addition, IHSs may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
To reduce power consumption, an IHS may be placed into different activity states or operational states with each state differing in levels of power consumption. Many components of the IHS, such as processors, application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) chips and chipsets, graphic controllers and similar others, utilize separate power rails. The power rails may have standard voltages such as 12V, 5V, 3.3V, 2.5V and 1.8V. One power rail may be derived from another. For example, a S0 power rail which is used while operating in a S0 (active) power state may be derived from a S3 power rail which may be used while operating in a S3 (suspend) power state and/or while operating in the S0 state. To maintain proper operation, manufacturers of these IHS components typically require the plurality of power rails to operate in compliance with predefined power up and power down sequences for each power rail. Failure to maintain compliance with the predefined power up and power down sequences may generally result in a latch up failure of logic circuits and/or may result in an unsafe, over current condition.
Presently, it is common to develop manufacturer and/or chipset specific power sequence circuits. These power sequence circuits are typically customized for each application by selecting appropriate values for tens even hundreds of discrete components such as a resistor (R) and capacitor (C) elements to control the power sequencing. Thus, changes in the IHS platform such as changes in the chipset components used in the IHS typically results in redesigning the power sequence circuits, which increases costs and introduces time delays in introducing new products.
Therefore, a need exists for providing increased flexibility in power sequencing applications. Accordingly, it would be desirable to provide for power sequencing one or more components of an IHS, absent the disadvantages found in the prior methods discussed above.